One Chance

by John Damen

A soldier and a civilain's journy to safety through Raccoon City.

1. The Soldier

"One Chance"

By John Damen

"Where eerie figures caper

to some midnight music

that only they can hear."

~ The Book Of Counted Sorrows

Chapter 1

"The Soldier"

The flame from the old, worn Zippo highlighted his face as he placed the small fire to the tip of the cigarette. His dark brown hair briefly flecked with strands of gold as the orange light came close to his features.

The flickering light cast shadows across face, making him seem older than he really was. He carried his thirty-four years well. So well, in fact, that people often took him for a 20-year-old college student. It was as flattering hearing the compliments from young women on his apparent youth as it was annoying when he wanted to buy a six pack and kept getting asked for an I.D.

Only two months away from an attack of thirty-five-itus, in the flickering flames of the lighter, he looked almost fifty.

With a flick of his wrist, he snapped the lighter closed and slipped it into a small utility pocket on the tactical vest he wore and readjusted the Colt M-4 Carbine enough to keep the sling from digging painfully into his shoulder.

The man, far from being the college student that young women mistook him for, was dressed in the olive drab uniform of the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Service. His black jungle combat boots were caked red with mud, and the darker red of dried blood.

Around his left arm was a gauze bandage, the blood seeping from the wound on his bicep was staining the otherwise white cloth a bright crimson red. He mused about how it was the same color of a rose before casting his sharp green eyes around the scene in front of him. He was standing next to a Dumpster; the smell of it was muted by the decaying bodies nearby. In truth, nearby was not adequate enough to describe the distance between him and the rotting corpses. One was right in front of him, about eight feet away and was slumped against the opposite wall. The other was on the other side of the two dumpsters next to him.

The soldier gazed up and down the ten-foot wide alley, idly wondering if he should shut the Dumpster's lid, but ultimately deciding against it.

He straitened up under the pull of the tactical-vest, being weighed down with both full and empty magazines for the assault rifle that was slung over his shoulder.

The city was once a prosperous community, though small by most standards. In a town of little more than five thousand, it seemed as though everyone knew everyone else. But then, as they say, the shit hit the fan. But in the span of a few days, it did more than just hit the fan. A proverbial manure cart crashed into a running jet engine and shit got blown all over the city.

The killing started about a month ago. First there were reports of tourists and hikers being attacked in the Arklay Forest on the outskirts of town. They seemed to have been attacked by wild animals, then they were thought to have been attacked by cannibals. Whatever was doing the killing, it didn't discriminate; men, women, children, Black, White, Asian; they all were partly eaten. Finally, the Raccoon City Police Department sent their Special Tactics And Rescue Squad, S.T.A.R.S. for short, to investigate. Out of the two teams to be sent; five members in the Alpha team, eight members of the Bravo team, only five individuals made it back. When they tried to tell people what they had seen, they were said to be suffering battle fatigue and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But others thought they were just plain old nuts. The result was the same, they were recommended to psychiatrists and little to no real thought was given to their stories or reports.

And really, who could blame those who thought of them as crazy? They were telling fantastic tails of zombies, monsters, giant snakes, and over sized spiders, killer plants, mutated sharks, and killer crows. It was the sort of thing you could find in a B-rate horror movie.

The surviving members of the S.T.A.R.S. teams; Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, Rebecca Chambers, and the helicopter pilot Brad Vickers, all drifted apart.

Chris, while still being officially employed by the Raccoon City Police Department, left to search for clues and evidence that would expose the company behind the nightmare, Umbrella.

Jill Valentine resigned from the Police Department shortly after her return. She was seen frequenting the local gun store. They said she had purchased an M-4 Carbine and was using the last bit of her pay to buy ammunition.

Barry Burton had taken a paid vacation and left town to see his family.

Brad Vickers was still working with the Police. He was flying over the town, patrolling for the most part, though he was privately keeping an eye out for the horrors he glimpsed back in the forest.

Rebecca Chambers seemed to have all but disappeared. She left with no notice to anyone, just packing whatever she could in a duffel bag and headed out of town in her Jeep.

It seemed that almost as soon as the last of the S.T.A.R.S. unofficially disbanded that the monsters started showing themselves, almost as though they were waiting for the last group of people who could stop them to break apart. Once it was found out to be a virus killing these people, and subsequently reanimating the corpses; a virus developed by Umbrella Corporation that they had dubbed the T-Virus, which was short for Tyrant-Virus; the police tried their best to organize against the monsters that the innocent population had become. White Umbrella, out of their desperation to appear concerned, dispatched the Umbrella Biohazard Countermeasures Service.

So here he was, standing in the middle of the shit typhoon, one of the last surviving members of the U.B.C.S., gazing at the ruins of the once peaceful city through wisps of blue cigarette smoke.

God, I hate this place. He thought as he took a drag from the cigarette and exhaled the light blue smoke through clenched teeth.

He hooked his thumb around the sling of his assault rifle and leaned against the red brick wall behind him, jerking his right foot sharply in an attempt to shake off the scrap of newspaper that had attached itself to the treads of his boot, only to groan sharply and intake a deep breath when the protruding edge of the charging handle on his rifle dug into his back over his kidney, and went into a sharp coughing fit when he sucked in too much of the nicotine laced smoke.

In his aggravation, he pushed away from the wall, plucked the almost untouched cigarette from his mouth and flipped it onto the hood of a nearby burning police car.

God, I fucking hate this place! he thought angrily, rubbing his throbbing flank.

He pulled the assault rifle from where it was slung over his shoulder, twisted his hand around the strap so the sling was twisted around his wrist; and held the weapon at a forty-five degree angle, the muzzle aimed at the concrete, the edge of the stock resting by his right shoulder. This stance would allow him to quickly bring the rifle to bear on a target, should one present itself.

Looking around, he made sure he was, for the most part, out of sight. He was waiting for news from the remaining members of his team to crackle over the radio, but so far, there was nothing but static. For one chilling moment, the radio crackled to life, but the sound that came through it wasn't that of his commanding officer. It was one of his teammates, a rookie, on his first mission. He was screaming for back up, terror filling his voice and sending chills down the man's spine.

The rapid pops of automatic weapons fire from the other team members could be heard behind the rookie's voice, as well as their screams. Screams of fear, screams of mind numbing terror, and shrieks of pain. The roar of the assault weapon closest to the rookie drowned most of them out as he transmitted his call for help.

There was a short shriek from the rookie, the sound of a rifle's roar filled the speakers of the small radio, then the transmission cut out all together. For a full minute the tiny black device was silent, then, with a small beep and a pop, another transmission came through the speaker, but what came out of the little black box the second time was possibly more chilling than the first.

In retrospect, he would have preferred the screams of terror and pain and the rapid pops of weapons fire. But what came over the radio was neither.

It was the sound of ragged breathing and a groan of pain, which was quickly silenced by a wet tearing sound. There was a sharper groan of pain, then the voice died out all together, but the wet sounds of something ripping continued.

Then came the moans.

These weren't moans of pain, nor were they moans of ecstasy. They were the moans of the mindless. They were muffled, sometimes, by a ripping sound, then chewing. This went on for almost two full minutes, then came a moaning sound, louder than the rest. It sounded like whatever, or whoever it was, was in a mindless rage.

There was a soft whoosh, then a series of sharp clacks and scrapes, then the radio fell silent for good. That was almost three hours ago, and no transmissions had been received since then.

The man kicked a pebble by the toe of his boot, sending it scuttling across the pavement, and sighed out of tension and boredom. He was bored, but he was also thankful. Because if he wasn't bored, then he'd be fighting for his life against hordes of the living dead. If he had to choose, he'd take boredom.

A door at the end of the alley banged and shuttered. He turned quickly towards the sound, and when it banged again, he jumped into the Dumpster and pulled the lid closed on top of him. He would rather wait in the rotten smelling foulness of the Dumpster than risk another confrontation with one of the monstrosities that had passed by his place of hiding. No sooner than he had quietly closed the lid to the trash receptacle than he had heard the door to the alley open, then close with a metallic bang. He started breathing through his mouth, partly to keep the sound to a minimum, but mostly to keep his nasal passages from being assaulted by the foul smell that had been quickly building up in the trash container.

After a short time, he heard the sound of footsteps. They were soft, steady, and evenly spaced. Not the brushing, dragging sound that the zombies made. He was about to get out of the putrid receptacle to see if he was right in thinking that the cause of those footfalls was a living human, and not a zombie or some other creature when he heard the moans. They were the moans that he had heard over his radio, the sounds of the zombies that he had fought so hard against in the first few hours of his deployment. When the moans came again, he was certain that they were coming from the dead body that was in front of the garbage bin that had become his temporary haven.

Five gunshots rang throughout the area. The shock-wave that was caused by the slug moving through the air and by the expulsion of gases from the barrel of the weapon caused a feeling on his eardrums not unlike getting poked with the eraser of a pencil. The sound that bounced around the inside of the dumpster deafened him momentarily from the second sets of moans and the second set of reports from the small firearm that was being fired a few feet away from his hiding place.

Two dull thumps sounded just outside of the Dumpster that hid him, then came the sound of quick footfalls as someone ran past his smelly hiding place.

There was a pause, then more moaning and shuffling. About twelve seconds later there came a loud explosion, one that defend him as the sound echoed around the alley and bounced off of the insides of the garbage bin. After a time it was quiet, only the sound of fading footfalls penetrated the foul smelling steel of the Dumpster. He cracked the lid to the garbage receptacle and peeked through the gap.

The dead body he had been standing in front of was now slumped over onto its left side, a fresh pool of blood soaking its already filthy shirt.

The soldier pushed the lid open a little more and wiggled out of the putrid receptacle while being careful to keep his rifle from hitting the metallic walls of the waste container, in case the sound of metal on metal would bring unwanted attention, both from the unholy monsters that now roamed freely in the town, and from humans who were greedy, underhanded, and power hungry. He could not understand why people didn't band together in times of need.

That must be just one of the many things that made humans so damn interesting. Their ability for great beauty, and great destruction being two of the more prominent of the interesting things. If nothing else, he was in the heart of an example of those two things. The city was once a nice town, one of the last towns in the Northern United States that had escaped all evidence of the urban renewal that had claimed to many other towns, such as Oklahoma City.

Raccoon City was a beautiful community, but now horrific monsters ran free in the streets and buildings that were inhabited by dead bodies. Monsters that were created by power hungry humans and corporations.

The man slid to the corner of the building and looked around the bricks in time to see someone run through a door on the far end of the building. Suddenly curious, he ran down the street, not caring if he attracted more monsters with the noise he was making, and stopped in front of the little cubbyhole where the door was situated.

The soldier paused in front of the door for a split second, and in that time, the sound of a crash pierced the metal door. Then came the familiar sounds of groaning and decaying feet shuffling on the concrete. He grasped the doorknob tightly in his fist and tried to violently open the entrance to the alley beyond. The knob was stuck tight, and the soldier thought that this wasn't going to be the last jammed handle that he came across before the night was out. The sound of gunfire came just a few seconds later. Loud bangs that had about one second separating each shot. There could have been as little as nine shots, or as many as twenty, but his body was producing far too much adrenaline for him to keep a clear enough mind to count the number of shots. He tried the doorknob again, but with little more success than he had on the first try.

The gunfire fell silent.

Letting go of the handle, the man decided all he could do now was stand and wait.

As the seconds turned into minutes, he started to get fidgety. By the third minute since the he was bouncing on the balls of his feet and running his thumb up and down the sling of the rifle. He needed to do something, he just couldn't think of anything.

Just when he was about to stop shifting his weight from foot to foot and sit down, there came a shrill scream from nearby. As soon as he heard it, his reflexes kicked in, and he was sprinting down the street. When he was halfway down the block, three sharp booms erupted from ahead of him. Judging from the sound, they were gunshots fired from a handgun.

Hearing the pistol fire, he picked up his pace, his heavy combat boots slamming into the pavement as he ran. His olive drab camouflage pants getting soaked to the knees as he splashed indiscriminately through puddles of water, and mud puddles as well.

He slowed down when he got to the end of the road, unsure if he was too late to help whoever it was that was doing the shooting when two more gunshots shattered the otherwise quiet night. The man turned and ran down the alley he had just been waiting in, heading in the direction of the gunfire, slamming into, and tumbling over, tin garbage cans and plastic trash sacks. He ducked under a broken fire escape and came to a skidding stop in a small alcove that hid a metal door.

The man carefully pulled the sling of his rifle, pulling it from where it was across his shoulder and aimed the barrel of his weapon at the crack of the closed door and, with his left hand on the doorknob; his right hand on the pistol grip of the rifle, pulling the stock hard against his shoulder while keeping the muzzle steady, quietly pushed the door open.

Once the door swung completely open, he put his left foot forward, his left hand supporting the barrel of the assault rifle by the heat shield, bracing himself against the recoil of the weapon in the event he had to start shooting.

His nerves were like live wires and he was so tense that if he were a watch, he would've exploded long before then. It was really a good thing that his finger slipped off of the trigger when he readjusted his grip.

A woman dressed in a blue tube top and a black mini skirt had just disappeared through a door at the end of the alley. She had reddish brown hair, blue eyes, and looked to be in her early twenty's. She also had a gray sweatshirt tied around her waist.

Had his grip been perfect when he opened the door, he would have shot her, purely from surprise and his own tenseness. He sighed in relief from not killing her, cursing his anxiety as he proceeded towards and up the ten small steps midway down the alley, passing a broken yellow bicycle on his way.

At the top of the steps he saw the two bodies. The first was the body of a young girl. She was sprawled face down in the middle of the alley. There were large wounds on her neck and on her left shoulder blade where she had been partly eaten. There was also a large bloodstain growing on her shirt over the small of her back and on the calves of her legs.

The second corpse was a male and in noticeably worse condition. It was in the process of decay, it's gray skin was ripped and torn, a large flap of flesh was hanging off of it's jaw, exposing teeth that should have been hidden. It was laying a few feet from the girl in a pool of it's own blood. There were five bullet holes in its chest in a wide group.

He checked for a pulse from the girl and noticed that she wasn't even cool yet. The soldier stood up and turned to the window in the wall to his left and peered inside just as the woman passed by and turned to climb up a staircase, on her way to the office of the warehouse.

The man sighed as he looked back at the corpse of the young woman, and he could not help but think of how wrong it was that her life was taken from her in such a brutal fashion.

Despite his profession of killing, he still had a strong since of right and wrong, and this was very wrong indeed. And seeing the young woman, lying on the pavement filled him with guilt.

If only I was a little quicker, he thought to himself. He couldn't help but feel responsible for this girl's death.

He tilted her head to the side, just enough so he could see the expression of utter agony and pain frozen on her features. The man guessed her age to be just a little older than sixteen.

Resigning himself to the fact that, no matter how fast he had gotten there, it wouldn't have been quick enough, the soldier backed away from the corpse and went back down the steps and out of the metal door. Once he was in the adjoining alley, he walked to the Dumpster he had hid in, climbed onto it and standing on the lid, he climbed onto the catwalk above him. He retrieved the olive drab rucksack he had hid up there and opened the flap. He pulled a large aluminum ammunition can from inside the rucksack and sat it on the metal grating before reaching into his tactical vest and withdrew an empty magazine from one of the pouches.

The soldier opened the ammo can and peered inside to see the last few lose rounds of ammunition for the M-4 Carbine he carried. He sighed, half in frustration, half in disappointment as he scooped the bullets from the bottom of the can, rubbed his fingers together until one of the rounds appeared between his thumb and index finger, and pressed the first bullet into the magazine. As he repeated this process, counting the number of bullets quietly, he started to feel a little more relaxed.

Three…four…five…six…

The feeling of doing something repetitive was soothing to him. He had done this countless times before he came to Raccoon City, before he joined the U.B.C.S., and even before he was in the military. The familiarity of pressing the bullets into the assault rifle's magazine helped to ground him to reality.

Twelve…thirteen…fourteen…fifteen…

Raccoon City couldn't be any worse than the action he saw during his military career, could it? After all, no one here was charging at him with a fully automatic AK-47 assault rifle. No one was screaming foreign obscenities while in the middle of blood lust.

Twenty one…twenty two…twenty three…twenty four…

The truth was, Raccoon City was worse, much worse than any battlefield he had ever been on. The enemies he had encountered before were only doing what they thought was right. They were doing what they did for God and country. Get rid of the American infidels and earn your place at Allah's side. Kill American GI for the honor of your family's name.

Twenty-seven…twenty-eight…twenty-nine…thirty.

The enemies in Raccoon City had no control over what they were doing. They were trying to kill him because of a virus. A virus that killed the victim and reanimated the corpse. The population had been turned into nothing more than zombies hungry for flesh. They died all because a company fucked up while developing new Biological Weapons.

The soldier slipped the now full magazine into a pouch in his tactical vest and, holding the last bullet in his right hand, took hold of his assault rifle's handle and pressed the small button above and forward of the trigger-guard. The magazine dropped out of the weapon and landed in his waiting left hand.

He let the rifle rest against his shoulder as he pressed the last bullet into the box and slapped the magazine back into the rifle.

The door at the end of the alley opened and closed. He had enough time to peer down through the metal grating to see the woman he had seen earlier walk further away from him into the alley and exiting through another door.

The man stood up and hefted the rucksack onto his shoulders and before jumping from the catwalk onto the Dumpster below him, then hopped to the pavement. Out of shear curiosity, he followed her through the door, and into an Y shaped alley beyond.

He crunched over broken glass and took the eight steps in front of him two at a time before coming to a halt on a wooden walkway. Proceeding carefully, he stopped and peered around the corner of the building. A pile of dead and rotting bodies lay about twenty feet away from him. From the way they were sprawled on the wooden walkway, it looked as though they had burst forth from the open doorway in the building he was leaning against. The bodies were blocking the path into an alley that branched off of the one he was currently standing in.

The man sighed; wondering which way the woman had gone. Figuring he always back track later, he proceeded down the alley, passing the pile of corpses, and down two sets of steps before coming to a halt in front of a metal door. He recognized it as the door that was jammed shut when he followed the woman the first time and heard the gunshots that must have been the ones responsible for the pile of corpses behind him.

The soldier turned without opening the door, and went back to the pile of bodies. Entering the doorway that the zombies had spilled out of, he turned right and descended down the stone staircase into a small storeroom. In the far left hand corner of the room, a man in a police uniform was slumped against a row of shelves, his face was disfigured and his intestines were in his lap. Gnats had made their home in and around his exposed entrails. The smell that hit him made his insides lurch up into the base of his throat and threatened to expel his long since digested meal of Tai-Chicken.

The only thing that kept him from turning and racing for fresh air, was his need for the items in the crates lining the shelves. He set his assault rifle aside, letting it lean against the wall on his left, and let the rucksack slide from his shoulders. The man kneeled down and once the cover was open, he reached into one of the crates to his right and pulled out a bottle of water and blew what dust he could off of the label and rubbed his thumb over the plastic to remove the rest of the grime. He looked closely at the adhesive label before he shoved it into the rucksack. When he was reaching for more bottles, the rifle's stock slid out from under it and the weapon clattered onto the concrete floor.

Sucking in a breath of foul smelling air and at least two gnats, the soldier leapt to his feet, knocking the rucksack askew, and ripped his 9millimeter Beretta 92F sidearm from its holster on his right thigh. He arose to a half-crouched position, bringing the pistol up to eye-level in a two-handed grip and aimed it towards the staircase behind him.

It took him almost three minutes before he was reasonably sure it was not a zombie or something worse coming down the steps, and only then did he lower the pistol enough so he was not looking down the sights, and studied the shadows on the wall in front of him. It was an additional five minutes before he convinced himself that the moving shadows on the stone walls was the result of moonlight and clouds headed for New York; and that the sounds in his head were from a combination of the leaky pipes, his ragged breath, imagination, and his own Tinnitus.

Lowering the Beretta, the man let out a sigh of relief and dropped his gaze to the floor. The culprit of the noise lay at his feet, looking innocent of scaring its owner.

The man picked the rifle from the ground and laid it across a row of boxes, making sure that it would not slip and scare him a second time. He holstered the pistol before grabbing the rucksack and quickly shoving three more bottles of water into it. He repeated this process endlessly until he had totally emptied one crate and then started on another.

Only when he had emptied over half of the crate of its bottled water did he stop. It wasn't because he was sure he would not go thirsty, it was because he knew he could no longer stay in the alley by the dumpsters. That area was no longer safe, and he could not wait for the order to regroup at the extraction point. It was going to be quite the hike with no wheeled transport, and he knew he would need to keep plenty of space in his rucksack incase he picked up items he would need along the way.

He closed the flap on the rucksack and secured it before hefting it onto his back and snapping the buckle on the built-in belt to keep it from moving too much as he walked or ran. He bent down and picked up his rifle from the boxes before turning and leaving the small room at a fast trot. He was desperate for fresh air and once he was outside, he sucked in great breaths of it to purge the smell and taste of the rotting body from his nose and mouth.

Not even giving the dead bodies in front of him a second glance, he stepped around them, and headed into the adjoining alley in front of him. He ran until the alley turned sharply to the right and paused there.

Keeping his back against the wall, the man peeked carefully around the corner. Nothing there, just another set of stairs and a rusty door. Feeling he had nothing to lose, he opened the door carefully and stepped through.

The sight that greeted him once he was through the doorway was pink graffiti scrawled on a rusted metal shutter. The debris that was piled up in the alley to his left made it painfully obvious that there was no way he was going to get across it. Not when there was clear passage to his right. The only thing that could be considered an obstruction was the dead body lying in the middle of the path in front of him. He walked towards the end of the alley, keeping a weary eye on the body until he passed it and was about to proceed until he saw a glint of blackened metal.

Knowing that whoever had killed this man had not bothered to check him, he reached down and withdrew a 9millimeter Beretta that was not unlike his own from the waistband of the bodies trousers and stuck it inside his tactical vest, knowing that the vest was tightened around his chest and abdomen so tightly that it would hold the weight of the pistol against his chest with little problems. He stood up and avoided the rest of the dead bodies as though they carried an infectious disease, which of course, they were.

Once he was sure there were no other zombies, the man started to run down the alley, past blocked apartments and closed shops. His boots crunched over scattered newspapers and crushed the already broken bottles that were unlucky enough to get in his way.

Mid-stride, his knees locked up and he came to an abrupt, skidding halt.

It was not a cramp that had stopped him.

It was fear.

He had seen some real horrors during his time in the military, but this was the first time he was frozen to the spot with a fear he had never known before this night.

Hidden in the shadows, hovering over one of three dead bodies, was something he had not seen in his briefing, nor had he seen since he had arrived in the city limits. Concealed in darkness, the thing was no more than a silhouette.

He could roughly see the horns atop its rudimentary head, and two long pinchers above two smaller ones, giving its mouth the look of a praying mantis. Its size was just slightly larger than a Volkswagen Minibus. It was crouched down on two long, surprisingly thin legs that looked far too weak to support its massive weight.

The thing looked at him with two glowing red eyes for a long moment.

The soldier was rooted to the spot, unable to move.

The thing lowered its body and extended two long, thick arms that ended in what could only be described as talons down to one of the bodies under it and lifted it as though it were a child's doll. It brought the body to its mouth, and the thing opened wide to receive its meal.

To the soldier, the thing's entire lower head and jaw seemed to open in half and it swallowed the corpse whole, its pinchers helping to pull the carcass into its throat. The thing reared upright, its face glaring at the overcast sky as the cadaver's legs disappeared down the thing's gullet. Only favoring the soldier with a glance, the thing lowered its body, and repeated the process with the second body.

When the thing had partially swallowed the third body whole, the soldier snapped out of his trance. He brought up his rifle, and to him he was moving in slow motion, he just couldn't get the rifle up fast enough.

The thing (for that's what it was, a thing) had consumed the remains of the third body with a gulping-choking sound, then turned its gaze back to only living human on the street.

The soldier had the stock of the Colt M-4 pressed hard to his shoulder and thumbed the selector switch to full automatic.

The thing heard the almost inaudible click, and knew what the end result would be if it stayed any longer.

The man tightened his finger around the trigger and felt it take up the slack before it stopped moving.

The thing's eyes flashed a bright, angry red in the split second it took for it to crouch down and leapt ten feet into the air. It jumped from a second story windowsill of an apartment building, across the ten foot wide alley, and landed on a third story ledge of the building neighboring the building.

The man followed its journey with the muzzle of his rifle, waiting for a good shot.

When the thing jumped over the rooftops, the soldier had just a brief glimpse of it in all it's horrendous glory before it unraveled two enormous wings from its body.

The soldier was reminded of over grown batwings and hesitated for just a few seconds, letting his finger off of the trigger and watched as the thing seemed to float in midair.

With one powerful flap or its wings, each of which were almost as big as its body, it vanished over the rooftop of the gray apartment building.

The soldier blinked three times, all the while peering down the sights of his rifle and wondering if he really saw that monster. It was some time before he dared to venture into the alley, and he kept the barrel trained on the patch of sky where the creature disappeared.

Not daring to linger any longer than he had to, the man ran to the barricade that funneled him into another alcove in which a wooden door resided. There was a series of gunshots from close by and they faded almost as soon as he entered the hideaway. The door looked like something you would find on a pirate ship, not in a city. The man felt that he didn't have time to think about this and grabbed the iron loop that served as a handle and pushed the door open enough so he could step through. Once on the other side, he let the door swing shut behind him as he ran into yet another alley.

He ran until he came to what appeared to be a small, sunken, courtyard that could be accessed by either a small staircase that was just off to his left as he looked across the grotto. The other way was by a narrow passageway on the other side of the hideaway. There were three carcass' lying on the ground in the courtyard. As he descended the steps, his gaze was not focused on the bodies, but in the chalk marks on the pavement, which he took to be a child's depiction of railroad tracks. The scooter and baseball bat leaning against the east wall, and the discarded toy box, which was next to some trashcans, fueled this theory.

In a happier time, this might have been the neighborhood kid's playground.

The soldier turned and headed into the small passageway and followed it as it turned slightly to the right and proceed up five steps, stopping abruptly when he saw the woman he had been following disappear through the doorway in the left wall.

Five gunshots crashed into the alley from behind the door the woman had entered.

He jumped up and ran to the door, tried to open it, but the knob had jammed. He stepped away from the door and, bracing his back against the wall, lifted his jungle boot to kick the door open. Just before he kicked the door like an angry mule, the gunshots stopped. He didn't know why he lowered his boot, but he did. He slowly put his ear to the door and listened. A man was talking, he sounded frightened. He said that there was something coming to kill them. A woman replied, her words muffled through the thick wooden door. The man said something else, then a door opened and closed with a bang.

The eavesdropping Umbrella soldier waited, his ear pressed against the cool wooden door.

The woman inside let out a soft sigh, then started walking, her boots thumping softly on the floor, coming closer until the soldier jerked away from the door, expecting it to open. It didn't and the footfalls faded until he was confident enough to replace his ear, listening again. The women gasped in surprise, then grunted in pain before a sound came through the door that reminded the soldier of the times he would throw rotten Halloween pumpkins off of a bridge with his dad when he was a kid.

He could hear the heavier thudding sounds of running for a second then another door opened and closed with a bang. After waiting for a few moments and hearing no movement inside, he tried the doorknob again. Expectedly, it was still jammed. Rearing back, he lashed out with his booted foot square at the center of the wooden door. The thing was weaker than he expected and it tore free of its hinges, swinging to the left as the latch remained in the strike plate before falling against the wall.

He entered the room cautiously, keeping his rifle braced against the hollow of his shoulder while peering down the iron sights of the M-4. He didn't move his eyes as he scanned the room, but twisted his upper torso in the direction he wished to look, not taking his gaze from the rifle's sights. He kept close to the wall, raising and lowering the barrel of the weapon as he searched the floors and at cross-level for any possible threats.

Empty brass 9millimeter shells popped and skittered across the floor, disturbed by his jungle boots as he moved cautiously along the wall. The brass shells gave off golden glints as they spun and danced across the tile floor.

Lying on the floor in front of his boot, was a corpse. Not so unusual in this town, but this one had five gunshots in its chest, just like the one outside though these shots were in a slightly tighter group. The soldier thought he should find the woman and tell her that she needed to start taking more head shots. He even toyed with the idea of trying to make it through this town with her, but for some reason he knew it would be pointless to try. He knew they would just end up getting separated, or she would ditch him, thinking he would just slow her down.

Because of these doubts, he decided to forego asking her help, and decided to continue on his own.

Feeling confident that the place was empty of enemies, he took in the fact that he was in a bar and slung his rifle over his shoulder. He realized for the first time how hungry he really was.

And thirsty.

Oh, lord, was he dying for a drink. Preferably one that would get him too numb, or too drunk to care about the city of the living dead that he was trying to survive.

He walked around behind the bar and examined the shelves under the counter. When he got to the bend in the L shaped bar, he saw another corpse; this one was missing its head. He swallowed the vomit that had suddenly found it's way into his mouth at the same time the smell found it's way into his nostrils and continued his search for numbing liquid. The only bottle that wasn't broken was covered in dust.

The soldier reached under the counter, pulled the bottle from it's hiding place, and blew the dust off of the label. He coughed when some of the dust followed the back draft and flew up his nose and blew into his mouth. Blinking the dust particles from his eyes, he rubbed his thumb across the label so he could see the words.

Everclear, perfect, he thought as he unscrewed the cap and swallowed a mouthful of the fiery alcohol. He turned to examine the counter behind him, but found it to be almost bare. The thin layer of dust was almost completely undisturbed, except for a rectangle about the size of a box of pistol ammunition.

He took another drink of the pure grain alcohol and headed around the bar and out of the door on the far side of the room. Once outside, he found himself back on the street where he had seen the body-eating monstrosity.

Feeling considerably more confidant than he had before the alcohol had taken effect, the man strolled down the lane, looking idly into the boutique through the barred window. Oddly enough, this seemed to be the only shop left untouched. He proceeded on, and soon came to what looked like a donut shop, but in his increasingly drunken state, could easily have been a fish market.

Deciding that any food would be better than the processed M.R.E.'s he had brought along, he went to the door, and found it to be barred closed with a green painted steal gauge mesh.

This poses no problem for Everclear Man, he thought to himself as he took another swig from the bottle and pulled his Beretta from its holster on his hip. He aimed the pistol with his right hand, not daring to put the all important alcohol on the pavement for even a second.

The first shot he fired missed the heavy padlock and sailed through the glass door behind the locked gate. He fired another round, determined to get into this establishment, and the bullet tore through the chain-links that was holding the barrier in place.

The man holstered the sidearm, and pulled the now ruined chain off of the gate and let it clatter to the ground before pulling the grid open and pushed his way into the shop through the unlocked door.

The room he entered was dark, most of the bulbs having been broken or burnt out of their own accord. The man reached into the thigh pocket of his camouflage pants and withdrew a long tube.

Let there be light, he thought to himself and slapped the tube hard against the wall. A bright green light shone through the plastic tube, and grew brighter when he shook it. The man threw the chemical light into the far right corner, and withdrew another tube from his pants and slapped that one against the wall as well. This time, he threw it into the corner closest to his left and waited for his eyes to adjust to the low light level.

It was a butchery. The man walked behind the counter and checked the products, figuring he could build a fire to cook the meat later. He groaned softly as he bent down to examine the shaved ham on the lower shelf.

He didn't see the person behind him.

He didn't hear her swift and silent footsteps.

But he did feel the cast-iron skillet when it crashed into the back of his head, sending him sprawling face forward onto the dusty, wooden floor.

He managed to control his fall only to the point to where he landed on his back, blinking up at the ceiling and a blurred face appeared, framed by curly auburn hair and thick rimmed glasses.

The soldier had time for one last coherent thought before he passed out.

God, I fucking hate this place.